


The Girl Who Waited Replies

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Feminist Themes, Gen, Meta, POV Female Character, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-21
Updated: 2011-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time there was a man who saved a girl. No. Once upon a time there was a girl. The man (both of the men) came later. She was there first, and she will be there whether the men are or not. [Post-ep for The God Complex, heavy spoilers for that episode.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl Who Waited Replies

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I have feelings about this episode. Not anti-Eleven feelings, but certainly anti-'Amy Williams' feelings.
> 
> ETA: [cantarina](http://cantarina.dreamwidth.org) made a gorgeous [podfic of this story here](http://podtor-who.livejournal.com/8179.html).

The Doctor was wrong. This knowledge doesn’t force Amy to rethink her entire universe-view, or cry for her fallen innocence, or anything else the Doctor might imagine half-fondly in the middle of the night. The Doctor is wrong about a lot of things, ranging from the fashion-appropriateness of a fez through to how many lives they’re risking with today’s plan. He was wrong about this too.

He thought this was what she wanted. No, worse than that. He thought this was what she _needed_. Trying to feed a fussy kid vegetables by hiding them behind Rory’s new car and a line of painted houses. He thought that they needed to be protected from time and space (and _him_ , she suspects, most of all) never mind that while she’s not nine hundred odd years old, Amy is still old enough to know who she is.

She is:  
\- Amy Pond. She will never be Amy Williams, except perhaps in some guilty corner of Rory’s brain. She wrote Amy Pond on her marriage certificate and it’s still what she writes now, right at the top of this application form for a job she doesn’t want, but which would fill some of the time.

\- Rory’s wife all the same, his in the way that he is hers. But they are two separate pieces of one whole, not her simply a joined-part of him. She tells the neighbour’s kid that, when she asks why Amy took that shiny new car for a spin all by herself.

\- A woman who fights. Amy barely knew that other woman with her name and twice her history, but she wasn’t surprised to see her with a sword in her hand.

Rory says, “Fencing?”

“Yes.”

“ _Fencing_.”

“Yes.”

“Should I ask why?”

“Because there isn’t a jousting club in easy driving distance.”

He nods. “Okay then. How’s the job hunt going?”

“Fine.”

Amy prefers the fencing. She doesn’t have thirty-six years to learn this all on her own, so she will take the instruction where it’s given. She’s the only other woman in the class apart from the teacher, but Amy doesn’t care. She had tried self-defence classes before, but there’s something special about the sing of this blade. Although all of the rules do frustrate her a bit.

Amy does look for jobs, just to give her something to do. There are ways in which Rory is better at adapting than she is: she thinks she could leave him in a hospital anywhere in the universe and he would find someone who needed his help. She loves him for that, among an uncountable other number of things. She never had a calling that way.

She is not:  
\- A mother. Not really. There is a hollow ache in her chest, like a broken bone that never healed the way it should. But she is a not a mother now. There were whole minutes where she held a baby in her arms and thought that she would tear the universe to pieces to protect this child. But then the child was gone, and a woman stood in her place. Amy doesn’t have the right to unmake her just because she wanted to see her baby grow up. If they thought - if River had _once_ said – that she wished things had gone a different way, there wouldn’t have been a force in existence that could have stopped Amy and Rory from finding her. Instead, Melody grew up into River in her own way and Amy tries hard not to look too much at the little girl next door.

She is:  
\- the Girl Who Waited. But she is also the Girl the Doctor came back for. Again and again and again. Amy thinks that should count for something. If she waited, he is the one who wouldn’t leave for good. He’ll be back this time too, she knows.

\- the Girl Who Knows Who the Doctor is. Not in the way that River does, in the winding of their crossing paths, where she knows his true name and how to drive the TARDIS and to make him blush. But Amy knows the other parts. She knows that he can be persuaded to sit down and watch a DVD and let the TARDIS spin in black space for hours of quiet. She knows that he is lonely without them and it has nothing to do with being adored.

Amy knows that she was a lonely little girl in a history that doesn’t exist now but still happened for people with good memories. Rory remembers being the Last Centurion and Amy remembers growing up with just her aunt and grieving for Rory without knowing why and a hundred-thousand other things that have been written out of history. She remembers that she was lonely, and that she had known if she showed too much of her love for something, it would disappear too. She thinks that’s how the Doctor found her – neither of them have learned the art of holding on just tight enough. They match, with her beautiful Rory at the point of the triangle to keep them both safely moored.

She is not:  
\- Ashamed. She had faith in a man who sometimes let her down. That’s what faith _means_. To sometimes reach for it and find yourself entirely alone. Still to believe that there is somewhere further to reach, if only you can bring yourself to try again. Her list of regrets is short, and that faith in him is not one of them.

\- Saved. He didn’t leave them here because Amy was weak, or stupid, or reckless. He didn’t leave them here because Amy was afraid. He left them here because _he_ was. She can’t hate him for that. He makes himself difficult to hate, the way he loves them all too much. He had loved her and he didn’t want to lose her. So he had left her instead. Amy can follow his logic – she almost always can - but that doesn’t make an ending of it. He had his choice when he crash-landed in her garden and fixed the crack and told her that he would come back for her in five minutes. She made hers fourteen years later, walking through the TARDIS doorway. She made it again on her wedding day, when Rory made it with her. The Doctor isn’t the one who gets to take that choice back. She can’t make him come back here. But neither can he make her safe. He can’t make her into something she’s not.

The little girl next door watches Amy over the garden wall. Amy uses a bit of curtain pole as a staff and twirls it about herself. She hits the wall (far away from the girl): _thwack, thwack, thwack_. Rory isn’t going to be impressed by the state of this thing when he has to hang the curtains back on it later. Little bits of stone fly up at her.

The girl asks, “Aren’t you scared you’ll hurt yourself?”

Amy laughs. _I’m not scared of anything. I’m scared for Rory. I’m scared for the Doctor. I’m scared of waiting forever._

The Doctor will come back, because he has never yet left her for good. Or Amy and Rory will find him, because they have learned now how to do that when they need to. Amy is not waiting, but that doesn’t mean she’ll step right into a life that the Doctor handed her the keys for. That might be someone’s adventure, but it isn’t the one that she chose. She chose her boys, and time and space, and if she can’t have all of those right now then she will be the one to choose something else.

Amy says, “Of course. But I’m not scared enough to stop.”


End file.
